This is a Lie - Mark Maynard

The following piece of prose was designed and executed to achieve written perfection. It was created by a diverse committee of experts in various fields related to writing, linguistics, the relational probability of the selection of various letters, vowels, consonants, diphthongs, words, word combinations and sentence structures, especially as those combinations relate to the perception of aesthetics of various readers.

By design, an English-speaking person of average intelligence will read the complete piece in 3.14159 minutes. Persons who read this in a significantly shorter time period have missed a great deal of the embedded meaning because of the various shades and degrees of connotation and denotation of words and word chains contained therein. Persons who require a longer period of time to read this are not English speakers, or, if English speakers, are not of average intelligence.

The rhythm and nuance of each carefully selected word will give the reader a deep sense of understanding and will also create an emotional connection with the reader in such a way that the indirect meaning of the words will necessarily be absorbed by said reader.

There once was a man from Nantucket, who kept all his clams in a bucket
He lost them one day
On his way to Bombay
And loudly exclaimed “Well then (CENSORED by the COMMITTEE)!”

Note how the rhythmic patterns are pleasing to the ear and note how the flow of words and stanzas are pleasing as well from a visual standpoint. These are all things that have been carefully studied and enacted by the committee.

Congratulations. Now that you have neared the end of the document, you are, by design, a more enlightened consumer of prose. Our studies suggest that reading this document the first time will result in minor changes to your intelligence quotient, but that continued reading, several times a day over the course of a six week regimen, will increase your intelligence quotient exponentially. This will make more sense to you, dear reader, upon subsequent readings.